Kwesi Yankah's 1997 inaugural lecture at the University of Ghana raises the question of how African structures and norms of communication have coped with European intervention. He asks,

"Are modern notions of free speech, free press, free expression which are already operative in our post-colonial regulative institutions, compatible with communicative norms and social structures in traditional society?"(p. 3).

Yankah identifies and describes the norms, modes, and functions of speech in pre-colonial Akan society, from instruments connected with speech (such as talking drums and the linguistic staff carried by the chief's orator) to forms and modalities (verbal taboo, silence, indirection, and open critique). All of these, according to Yankah, demonstrate the existence of a wide latitude for expressive freedom in pre-colonial Akan and other African societies.

Against this background, Yankah discusses the consequences of colonial intervention and new media such as print and radio which arose from and reflected the socio-economic system of capitalism. When introduced into Akan and other societies, these new media complicated the relationship between free speech and appropriate cultural behaviour. Although Africans were capable of both adopting and resisting the foreign systems, genuine tensions emerged, which remain today.

To illustrate his point, Yankah cites conflicts between leaders and the media in contemporary Ghana and, by extension, other parts of Africa. He highlights the problems of keeping inherited cultural communicative norms in the face of these new developments resulting from European intervention. In pre-colonial African society, norms and parameters guided free speech, but European institutions and media forms destabilized these parameters. As a solution, Yankah suggests that the indigenous cultural norms need to recognize and adapt to certain exigencies of contemporary reality, such as electronic media and radio. Those involved in contemporary media and its institutions need to study and pay attention to the indigenous cultural norms.

In terms of identifying and describing the resources and modalities of speech in pre-colonial Africa, Yankah's book is very useful. His theoretical framework, however, is rather conventional, if not unhelpful. He sees Africa in terms of a dualism between "traditional" and "modern" and associates "modernity" with "western." This framework, well-entrenched in African studies, is very problematic, to say the least. Do we need this Eurocentric perspective, which categorizes pre-colonial African societies as traditional and equates modernization with "western" influence? Is there no African modernity? Did Africans sit still for millennia waiting for Europeans to come and modernize them? There must be a better way of theorizing the notions of tradition, traditional, modern, and modernity.

Each cultural institution, object, and practice must be seen as the result of many forces and processes. In every society, there were rebels and critics who challenged the norms; there were people who disobeyed, questioned, mocked, or ignored tradition; there were also pioneers. All these were the forces of change from within. Even such a "traditional" figure as the chief's orator, whose office and paraphernalia Yankah considers as having been there from time immemorial, has not been static (p. 9).

Another common error in African studies which also appears in Yankah's book is generalizing about Africa on the basis of a specific African society. Again and again, scholars of Africa study a culture -- Yoruba for example -- and then write as if Yoruba and African were synonymous. Since his study focuses on Akan society, Yankah needs to maintain that focus consistently and never confuse Akan with African, as he does occasionally.

The failure to theorize afresh the notions of traditional and modern, or at least to realize the essentially neo-colonial ways in which these terms are used in relation to Africa, is the chief weakness of Yankah's book. This problem runs throughout the book to the very end. This problem aside, Yankah's book is very informative. It covers a broad range of issues and has a bibliography valuable for further study. This book is suitable for any library.

Joseph L. Mbele
Department of English
St. Olaf College